Lean Blog Audio

What's Going on at Tesla? Is @ElonMusk Following up on Employee Injuries? There's a lot to admire about Elon Musk. I admire his risk taking and his entrepreneurial spirit. I use PayPal a lot (one of his early companies) and I admire the innovation of Tesla and SpaceX. But, I question how much Musk and Tesla have been willing to learn from Toyota. I saw this article last year and never got around to blogging about it: "This Email From Elon Musk to Tesla Employees Is a Master Class in Emotional Intelligence" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

The chain Whole Foods is reportedly having inventory shortages and morale problems. It sounds like a real mess, but thankfully nobody is calling it Lean. Their "Order to Shelf" system reminds me of "Pull to Order" work that I was involved in at Dell about 20 years ago... --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Tour Preview: The Japanese Health Care System at a High Level As I prepare to go back to Japan, I'm sharing some insights about the Japanese health system from the excellent book "The Healing of America," by T.R. Reid. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

The WSJ Overgeneralizes about The "Japanese Model," Not All Companies Are Toyota Not all Japanese companies are the same. "Lean isn't easy" if you're a Japanese company. Toyota has created something special, since "Toyota culture" is not exactly the same as "Japanese culture." The WSJ says the "model is cracking." Do scandals involving quality and ethical lapses involving companies including those and Nissan tarnish Lean and the Toyota Production System? No. That's as silly as thinking the Wells Fargo banking scandal tarnishes Silicon Valley (although the Valley does enough to tarnish itself). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

#Lean Can Be Very Fragile, Especially With Executive Changes Lean can be very fragile. History shows that Lean can fall apart even in an organization that is years into a "Lean journey" with strong CEO involvement. How is this possible? If often happens when a new CEO is brought in from the outside. In the case of the manufacturing company, Wiremold, it happened when they were acquired by a French company, Legrand. As an aside, the team that coined the term "Lean" almost used the term "fragile," as I blogged about here. Back in 2007, Bob Emiliani joined me for Episode #30 of the podcast. As we revisit the podcast and the new transcript I had made, what are the lessons for manufacturers or hospitals? What's the risk that's created when new leadership takes over? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Employee Complaints About Lean in Healthcare, Even at Some of the Best Organizations Last week, I blogged about some employee complaints related to rotating day and night shifts at the Toyota San Antonio plant. In that post, I mentioned that employees who post on Glassdoor.com and other sites might not be a representative sample of the full employee population. With that in mind, what happens when we search the Glassdoor surveys of some well-known "Lean hospitals?" I posted a few of these employee comments on LinkedIn the other day (a short post that has received over 50,000 views and prompted a lot of discussion). --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Somebody *Did* Get Unjustly Fired in Hawaii, But System Problems Should be Blamed TL;DR Summary: "Employee 1" (the guy who pushed the "wrong" button) got fired. But the FCC report says: "The report finds that the false alert was not the result of a worker choosing the wrong alert by accident from a drop-down menu, but rather because the worker misunderstood a drill as a true emergency. The drill incorrectly included the language "This is not a drill."  So, the language from the drill didn't meet the standard for what the drill language is supposed to say. So, how is it fair to fire the worker who heard "this is not a drill?" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I often get asked a question along the lines of "So, what exactly do you do?" Today, I give some updates about my various projects and partnerships, including continuing with KaiNexus (with a different title) and a new partnership with Value Capture. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I've written about many of these ideas and themes before in various blog posts, but I wanted to consolidate my thoughts on the Lean concept of "standardized work" in a single place. This is partly for my own personal reference (and future linking), but also can prompt some discussion amongst my friends, the Lean Blog readers. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

What We're Looking Forward to Learning at the Toyota Plant Tour Tomorrow, with the entire KaiNexus team, I'm going to visit the Toyota truck plant in San Antonio, the plant referred TMMTX. The 15 of us will be there in closed toed shoes and all other required clothing to learn about the Toyota Production System, Kaizen (continuous improvement), and Lean. I've blogged about it on the KaiNexus blog. I asked the KaiNexus team to say a little bit about what they hope to learn in the visit and you can read their comments it here. In this post, I share a 24-minute tour preview webinar that I put together, links to past tour blog posts, and more. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

What the Book "Lean Thinking" Said About Healthcare in 1996 http://www.leanblog.org/audio244 When the book Lean Thinking (by Jim Womack and Dan Jones) was originally published in 1996, it seems likely that hardly anyone was applying Lean principles in healthcare. Sure, you had organizations applying TQM or CQI principles (or even some of the lessons of Dr. W. Edwards Deming). Joan Wellman did some of her first Lean healthcare experiments in 1995, but there weren't any "Lean healthcare" case studies yet. What does their book say? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

The Response to the Hawaii False Alarm Can't End With Firing Someone -- This and other nuclear threats due to bad systems http://www.leanblog.org/audio243 Saturday, you might have seen the news about a "false alarm" push alert that was sent to many iPhones and other smart phones in Hawaii. An alert was also sent out over many TV channels through the Emergency Response System. Is the response one that focuses on blame and punishment? Or is it focused on understanding how systems fail and how to improve them to prevent future recurrence? How does this all apply to your organization? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Did Toyota's Mindset Really Leave the (Now) Tesla Building? Tesla builds cars in what used to be the NUMMI factory, a joint venture between Toyota and GM (which meant it was run as a Toyota plant with "Lean" practices). Before that, it was a dysfunctional GM plant. Now that it's a Tesla plant, did they learn from Toyota or does it seem more like "the old GM?" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

A Powerful Message from Toyota's President, Akio Toyoda: No Best, Only Better In today's post, I share and write about this message from Akio Toyoda that was posted online: “Making Ever-better Cars and Human Resource Development: The Forces That Power Sustainable Growth“ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Should #Lean Conferences Add a "Code of Conduct" for Speakers and Attendees? In today's post, I pose a question: Should the major Lean conferences adopt or adapt a practice that's now common at tech events, including Agile and Lean Startup events: a "Code of Conduct" for participants and attendees. Is this a countermeasure to a problem that doesn't exist in the Lean community? Or, is it still good to proactively encourage people to speak up to conference organizers if they are subject to bad behavior during the event? In this post, I get feedback and thoughts from the Lean Enterprise Institute, AME, Catalysis, Lean Frontiers, and the Shingo Institute. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

#ChangeChampions at Franciscan St. Francis Health - in Supply Chain and Beyond Today, I'd like to share the second in my series of articles about "Champions of Change." Here, we feature my friends at Franciscan St. Francis, the health system of my Healthcare Kaizen co-author Joe Swartz. As I wrote about in the first article in this series, successful and innovative organizations have "champions of change" at all levels of the organization, and we see that at Franciscan. You can read the article over at Becker's Hospital Review: Champions of Change Make the Difference at Franciscan Health Or you can download a PDF from Cardinal Health. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

I've been going through the book by the late Peter Scholtes: The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done. His work builds upon the legendary W. Edwards Deming and Russell Ackoff, among others. I often quote Scholtes (something also attributed to Peter Senge and others) as saying: "People don't resist change, they resist being changed." I think that's very insightful and that thought has led me to study change management, "motivational interviewing" and other related topics. It turns out that having the right answer and pushing it on others isn't the best strategy for effecting sustainable change. I had to learn those lessons the hard way and I'm still learning. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Who are the "champions of change" in your organization? Is your CEO a champion of change? How many of your front-line managers and staff are champions of change? Are you? What does it mean to be a champion of change? Today, I'm sharing an article that I've written on this subject... and I'd love to hear your stories about champions of change. Please share your stories on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag #ChangeChampions. Or, you can post a comment below. Click the following link to download a PDF version of the article: "The Essential Ingredient to Improving the Hospital Supply Chain" You can also read the article on Becker's Hospital Review. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Of Course Doctors Hate Being "Excluded" From Attempts to Improve Thanks to those of you who sent me this HBR article: Doctors Feel Excluded from Health Care Value Efforts Long story short... brought to you by Bain consultants: Doctors don't like being excluded and organizational satisfaction goes up when you engage and include people. Brilliant! Obvious? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/lean-blog-audio/support

Come Join Me to Study Lean & Kaizen for Healthcare: Japan 2018 In the past year or two, it seems like I have heard more about people and organizations leading Lean study trips to Japan. This has gone on for decades, but there seems to be a resurgence. I first partnered with Kaizen Institute in 2012 to lead a "Lean Healthcare" study tour, we did another in 2014, and we're actively planning our next trip in early 2018. Click here to learn more via a web page that I run. You can also click here for a PDF that previews the 2018 tour. Registration has not yet opened, but contact me if you'd like to be notified with details. The dates are February 26 to March 2, 2018. Details are still being finalized, but the tour would start in Tokyo and end in Nagoya. The plan is to not just visit some hospitals that are leaders in Lean and quality improvement practices, but to also visit Toyota and some other world-class organizations. The trip costs 5400 euros, which is currently about $6300. This cost includes everyt